Gabby lives by two unbreakable rules: don’t expose her kind, the Sary, and don’t fall in love—too bad some rules are made to be broken.

When Gabby’s most difficult charge accidently shoots her in front of a class full of students, the event exposes her carefully hidden identity. She shifts from looking like a normal teen to her secret Sary form, revealing her wings and the existence of her kind—immortals who try to keep people from committing suicide. Her incident attracts the attention of the next leader of the Sary, Jassen, who offers her an impossible bargain: she can keep her wings if she makes amends with those who know the truth. Things get more complicated when a rebel Sary, intent on exposing them to the world, starts interfering with Gabby’s work. And there’s no denying her attraction to Jassen, who is torn between his duties and his heart. With threats at every turn and her immortality on the line, Gabby has to find a way to save the Sary or surrender the sky forever.

Excerpt

Bea pushed away from me and her grief melted into a calculated look. “So, you can heal yourself, too?” She went over to my couch and dropped onto the old cushions like it was any other day she planned to hang out. She was just trying to distract herself from what had happened, and I really couldn’t blame her.

“I really can’t talk about this.”

“Yeah, I get that. Otherwise, I would have asked you ages ago. But now that I’ve actually seen what you are, I thought—”

“Wait, what? You would have asked me ages ago?” I held up both hands to get her to stop.

“Gabby, you are seriously the most obvious supernatural, angel, whatever, thing. I knew there was something different about you from the first time I came over here.”

My jaw dropped open. “What do you mean?”

Bea grinned. “Come on, you do all kinds of random stuff. I swear you’re the only person I’ve ever met who has read every classic novel ever written. And you never take real notes in class. You speak at least three languages that I’ve caught you translating. You’re always watching out for Chad, even though I know you didn’t really like him. Even today when he was going to kill us all, you tried to stop him. There were so many random little things. Seriously. So, a month ago, I did a little test.”

My jaw hung around my knees. I motioned for her to continue, which she did with a self-satisfied grin.

“When was the last time you used the one and only bathroom in this apartment?”

My jaw snapped shut. “What do you mean?”

Bea laughed. “It’s your biggest tell. You never eat. And therefore, you never go to the bathroom. I’m sure no one else would ever notice, but we’re around each other a lot. And I’ve never seen you even drink water.”

She got to her feet and made her way down my hallway to the bathroom. There, she pulled up the toilet lid to reveal a complex, woven pattern of toilet paper covering the bowl. With the lid down, I would have never noticed it.

“You don’t use your home toilet. And neither do your ‘parents’. That’s how I knew for sure something was different about you.”

As I leaned against the counter, my fingers curled around the edge and my nails dug into the grout while I fought for something to say. Anything. But nothing even processed.

“And you didn’t say anything?” I sputtered.

“Why? I didn’t care. You’re my best friend. I was curious, but I figured you had to keep it a secret. But after today, well, I guess your secret’s out of the bag. Might as well tell me a few things.” She laughed a little, eager to solve the mystery of me. She turned to my feather I had pinned to the wall and ran a finger along the edge of the plume, shaking her head a little like she couldn’t quite believe her luck.

“You can’t tell anyone,” I breathed. I backed away from her and out of the bathroom, back to the living room. “Really. You could get into trouble.”

“Oh come on, Gabby. You and I both know I won’t. No one would even believe me if I did.”

It was true. No one would believe her. Except my classmates. “What— what do you want to know?” Anything I said could only be considered stupid. But it was Bea. She had been a good friend. And I needed someone to talk to. I needed her to be my best friend before I lost everything.

“What are you?” she asked like it was the most obvious question in the world.

I swallowed hard and plopped onto the couch next to her. “I’m a Sary.”

“Sary.” She rolled the word over her tongue. “What does that mean?”

“It means I help people. Stop them from killing themselves.”

Bea’s jubilant demeanor fell away. “Oh. That sucks. Really sucks.”

“Yeah. I was supposed to keep Chad from…doing what he did today. But he was too much for me to handle. And the whole thing today…” I stared out the back window. The dark green of the oak trees against the just-turned-golden grass was beautiful, but not enough of a distraction from the hurt of Chad’s death. “I should have stopped it all before it got so bad.”

She reached over and took my hand. Her long, slim fingers warm and comfortable against my chilled skin. “What happens now?”

Reviews

Monday, 05 May 2014

I received an ARC from Ms. Houson.
When I saw this book, it instantly caught my eyes. The story seemed nice and this race called the Sary, particularly piqued my attention. I'd never heard of such beings and I love original ideas. Saries are people who died before their first breath and so they can choose to become Sary, who have wings and help suicidal mortals to overcome their depression.
I loved the idea of the Sary. The idea that people who were not given the opportunity to have a life are given the opportunity to thwart others from taking their own touched me deeply. I've noticed that most authors have their particularly strong points. Some of them yields us wonderfully penned landscapes, some of them have especially hilarious lingo and some of them transmit emotions excellently. Well, Ms Houston's way to describe emotions is outstanding. I'm absolutely sure she can bring tears into everybody's eyes.
This skill perfectly matched with our FMC, whose POV the novel is in, and who is a sentient, but courageous and ready to make sacrifices for people. She is not an exquisite Sary, however, in my opinion she is better than most of them for the same reason.
After an 'accident', the successor of the Sary leading, named Jassen, visits Gabby and they fall in love with each other despite the fact that it's forbidden. He's different than most of the YA MMCs. He's not snarky but utterly reserved, he needs help sometimes and he's not afraid to admit it. Shortly, he is just as sentient as Gabby. They make a really lovable couple, by the way.
The only thing I regretted is that Marcus had only one scene. He seemed to be a nice guy and I'd have been glad to find out more about him, but that's just me, and it wasn't necessary for the plot. Speaking of which, it was full of unexpected twists and it could surprise me, when I expected it to do so the least.
All in all, I adored every word of it, and although I haven'